Tenure and Party Unity Voting in the United States Senate

Inherent to the United States Congress is the need for individual members to vote on issues and legislation. An individual vote on any particular piece of legislation is a function of numerous variables, with party affiliation being a major factor in this decision. Due to the parties’ ability to negatively affect dissenting members of the Senate, senators seldom break from the party position. However, several cases also exist where individuals disregard the party position and vote with the other side. Factors not related to party control can then be considered non-party factors. The question then follows, what non-party factors cause Senators to vote against the party position? Controlling for party affiliation, I will look at individual votes of Senators where party lines were crossed. Analyzing which non-party factors caused such breaks, I will identify and characterize such factors. As these non-party factors are powerful enough to cause Senators to risk party retaliation, identifying these specific factors is an important contribution to the current scholarship on legislative behaviors. Based on the literature, I have determined that the tenure of individual senators is an explanatory variable that has been under studied and could yield interesting results if analyzed